The Tufted Puffin 275 



Jlunl or rocky soil is not shunned in prosperous colonies, but many efforts 

 here are baffled outright, and "prospects" are at least as numerous as 

 occupied burrows. Elsewhere the top soil on precipitous, clinging ledges 

 may be utilized, or else crannies, crevices, and rock-hewn chambers. 

 I "poll the Farallone Islands, California, these birds have little opportunity 

 for digging in the earth, and little necessity for providing fresh burrows, 

 for crevices and cubby-holes abound. These are, for the most part, 

 ample and substantial, and most of them doubtless have seen use meas- 

 ured by cycles rather than by generations. Many eggs, and sitting birds 

 as well, are visible from the outside ; while some of 

 the nesting-sites are nothing more than the inner- 

 most recesses of niches and caves occupied by Murres. 



On the Farallones, there is a fierce, albeit silent, competition between 

 these silent birds and the rabbits which swarm over the rocks. 1 have 

 seen impulsive bunnies which, fleeing from fancied danger, and taking 

 refuge in the first burrow at hand, emerged more hastily than they went 

 in. The Tufted Puffin is a dangerous, as well as a determined foe, and a 

 bite from that rugged beak will cut to the bone. 



Although equipped with so formidable a weapon, the birds, in digging 

 their burrows, appear to depend upon their feet. These are provided with 

 nails as sharp as tacks, and the "finish" of the nesting-chamber usually 

 exhibits a criss-cross pattern of fine lines. 



Long grass and dense thickets, as of salal, salmon-berry bushes, or 

 dwarf spruce, occasionally afford refuge to birds hard-pressed for room. 

 Here the Puffin, starting from some exposed edge, drives a tunnel through 

 the matted vegetation and deposits its egg upon the surface of the ground, 

 in shade almost as intense as that afforded by the earth itself. 



( )nly one egg is laid, dull white with faint vermiculations of brown 

 and purplish. Because the nest-lining is usually of the scantiest, a few 

 salal leaves or bits of grass, the egg is often so soiled by contact with the 

 earth as to pass for dingy brown. 



The baby Puffin is your true Puffin, and it is undoubtedly he who gave 

 this trivial name to the group. He is, indeed, a mere puff-ball of slaty- 

 black down, for he is densely covered at birth with down at least an inch 

 long, and you could blow him away (Pouf !) if he were not so fat, and 

 anchored in a hole. With the approach of the first 

 spring he takes on first the feather-tufts, of a dull p u "ffin 



brownish hue, then the white facial mask, with corre- 

 sponding bill changes ; but whether or not the yearling bird breeds, is an 

 open ((iiestion. The non-breeding birds remain at sea. 



The Tufted Puffin enjoys the widest breed ing- range of any bird in the 

 North Pacific, except the Pigeon Guillemot : and, although not so thor- 

 oughly distributed as that species, it is undoubtedly far more abundant. 

 On the American side, it breeds as far south as the Santa Barbara Islands, 

 California, and as far north as Cape Lishurne, in northwestern Alaska; it 

 is. however, of comparatively rare occurrence in Arctic waters. On the 

 Asiatic side, its breeding range extends as far south as Japan ; while its 



